The Center’s plans to serve the diverse needs of the LGBTQ communities include: various meeting/conference/class rooms, phone banks, exhibit spaces, office space for 11 non-profit groups, various ceremonies (like weddings, funerals, etc.), a café, access to internet, information and referral services, and special outreach to newcomers, youth and seniors. It all sounds exciting and ambitious. It’s high time San Francisco got its community center.
As part of its ongoing efforts to document the GLBT history and culture of the San Francisco Bay Area, the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center at the San Francisco Public Library has begun to acquire portfolios of work by documentary photographers. This project, funded through the generosity of the Hormel Endowment, will develop into a important resource for researchers as well as offer the potential for library exhibits featuring local artists. The project began in 1998 with portraits by Robert Giard of GLBT literary figures with strong ties to the Bay Area. Selections of Giard’s beautiful portraiture had previously been exhibited at the library and his Particular voices: portraits of gay and lesbian writers was published by MIT Press in 1997. Dan Nicoletta, known for his astute depictions of drag queens, transgendered people, and other queers, assembled a powerful portfolio of his work. This year, Cathy Cade and Chloe Atkins, two long-time lesbian photographers, will see a representative sampling of their work housed under the auspices of the Hormel Center. Cade along with Nicoletta had many images in Gay by the Bay, and Atkins’ work appeared in Atkins: Girls night out as well as part of a TransArt 2001, a recent group exhibit curated by Jordy Jones at the Hormel Center and the GLBT Historical Society of Northern California. The exhibit and the evening of performance by transgendered artists was attended by over 250 appreciative audience members.
An exhibition of European instruments of torture and capital punishment from the collection of the Criminal Medieval Museum of San Gimignano (Siena), Italy is being held at Herbst International Exhibition Hall in the Presidio through Oct. 14. “Torture,” co-sponsored by many international and local organizations including the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, is a fascinating, if disturbing, display of all manner of implements. More explicit class, gender, and race analysis would have been appreciated in the descriptions of these mostly historical instruments, some still in use. One can only assume that “queers” have been among the many subjected to such brutality. http://www.torturamuseum.com
Preliminary plans are in place for an exhibit entitled “Positive” to be curated by Visual AID. The work, by artists with HIV and AIDS, will be displayed in the San Francisco Public Library’s Skylight Gallery on the 6th floor and the third-floor James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center during the month of December, to coincide with World AIDS Day. Related programming is also being developed commemorating the lost voices of writers and artists to AIDS.
Jim Van Buskirk
James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center
San Francisco Public Library
jimv@sfpl.lib.ca.us
Many Caucus members have been involved in the planning of this new gallery, including yours truly who chairs it and has organized the opening show. A grand opening and party will accompany the Valentines Day, 2002 display of a suitably themed exhibition of major works by Robert Rauschenberg called “Love Letters.” This selection of works from the collection of Rauschenberg assistant Terry Van Brunt includes many works never before publicly displayed. It is a particularly notable collection both for its quality and for Rauschenberg’s uncharateristically open reflection of male affection, for the works include numerous images of Van Brunt and Rauschenberg together. The show will include the publication of a catalog. Guest curatorial positions will be made available for subsequent exhibitions.
Please contact Jonathan Katz at Katzartfag@aol.com for further information or exhibition proposals.
For instance, full frontal nudity, especially of men, is far more transgressive in Japan than in the US. The Japanese are even more fat-phobic than we are, and have standards of female beauty as narrow as ours, so the fat nudes are more or less equally transgressive in both countries. On the other hand, the Japanese place more value on the role of fine art, so the artistic quality of the photographs affects the Japanese response more than it does the American response.
I make a point of photographing widely diverse people -- gender, class, race, size, ability. In the US, the range startles people -- even discomfits some -- but we define ourselves as a diverse people. Most Japanese, on the other hand, either see the American diverse nudes as exotic or perceive the commonalities that transcend boundaries, but they do not perceive transgression, perhaps because it’s not about themselves. On the other hand, because most Japanese see themselves as a homogenous people, many of them find Women of Japan transgressive on a level which is foreign to most Americans. The photo essay so far includes a woman of Korean ancestry (third generation in Japan), a bicultural American who lives in Japan, and at least one woman of ethnic Japanese ancestry who does not “look” Japanese. To many, this is transgressive and profoundly unsettling.
In general, the Japanese have far more personal exposure to same-gender nakedness (public baths, etc.) than we do. In particular, many Americans are unsettled by pictures of men nude together. In this country, many people have trouble configuring my picture of a nude 92-year-old grandfather with his nude 33-year-old grandson; some ask “Are they lovers?” In Japan, family is the presumed connection. On the other hand, in Japan they draw much sharper distinctions between what “respectable” (i.e. “real”) people can be expected to do and what models are expected to do, so public photographic nude portraits are far more shocking. In this country, it is not astonishing to hear that an author, a professor, or a sports figure has posed nude; in Japan it is almost unheard of.
On the other hand, displaying photographs of nudes to children is far more transgressive in the United States. The government-sponsored museum arranged for me to lead a gallery tour of the exhibit and an accompanying workshop for children (6-12). The children1s parents accompanied the children for the gallery tour and observed the workshop. They were delighted with both. A similar tour would have been completely impossible in the US.
The two cultures differ in so many ways that it’s not surprising that transgressions vary. I’m still absorbing my experiences, so these are very preliminary thoughts.
Laurie Toby Edison
ltedison@candydarling.com